


let me be the one you come running to

by CaitlinFairchild



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Romance, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 19:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1755707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaitlinFairchild/pseuds/CaitlinFairchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, Sherlock,” John murmurs. “Love. Just--just dance with me. Please.” John presses his face to Sherlock’s chest in entreaty. </p><p>Sherlock doesn’t know what else to do, how else to survive this moment, so he does what John asks, and dances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me be the one you come running to

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came from a two-line tumblr post:
> 
> "Imagine your OTP slow dancing to your favorite song.
> 
> ...during the Apocalypse."
> 
> No happy endings here, guys. Heed the tags.
> 
> I am sorry. Truly I am.
> 
> Here are the songs mentioned in the story. Open them in another tab to set the scene.
> 
>  
> 
> [Let's Stay Together](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COiIC3A0ROM/)
> 
>  
> 
> [How Can You Mend a Broken Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgAFcvIw8J4/)
> 
> EDIT:
> 
>  
> 
> My first cover ever, by the lovely Sherlockxxxx, whom you should go follow because her stuff is boss:
> 
> [Cover Art for let me be the one you come running to](http://sherlockxxxx.tumblr.com/post/88148143483/inspired-by-created-for-let-me-be-the-one-you)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Come follow me on Tumblr if you like:  
>    
> [Caitlinisactuallyawritersname](http://caitlinisactuallyawritersname.tumblr.com/)
> 
> or hit me up at CaitlinFairchild1976@gmail.com.
> 
>  
> 
> A million thanks to everyone for reading. You make my world go round.

John has been awake for almost three days now, tending to her.

He hasn’t left her side the entire time, trying to coax her into taking tiny sips of the tinned soup Sherlock heats over the Bunsen burner, wringing out cool cloths for her burning forehead, murmuring nonsense words of reassurance as she moans and weeps in semi consciousness.

It all comes to nothing in the end, as they both knew it would. Mrs Hudson dies gasping for air, thrashing and crying, blood streaming from her eyes and nose as John sits by her bed, calm and strong, holding her hand until she takes her last bubbling, gasping breath.

Sherlock Holmes has seen and endured horrors most people can’t even comprehend, but this moment, watching his landlady die, is the most afraid he’s ever been in his entire life.

***

After Mrs Hudson chokes out her agonized last, John sags visibly, his shoulders slumping forward as he pinches the bridge of his nose. He breathes out once, twice, a harsh hitching noise, but when he sits up again his eyes are reddened but dry.

Sherlock places a hand on his back, feeling the warmth of John’s skin through his vest and plaid shirt. It’s stifling in this close room; he vaguely remembers it’s early summer outside. The very idea of flowers and green grass and blue skies seems ludicrous, somehow.

“Go upstairs,” he says. “You’re exhausted. Get some rest. I’ll take care of her.”

John stills for a moment as if to ask a question, then shakes his head.

“There’s no point,” he says. 

It takes him several moments to understand what John is talking about. He feels like everything is moving at half speed, his limbs swimming against thick, invisible treacle.

“I know,” Sherlock says at last. “But she couldn’t bear to be left like this, could she.”

John tilts his head as if considering, then nods. 

“The purple dress,” he says. “That was her favorite, I think.”

***

The unreality of it all makes him feel far away, almost untethered from his body as he takes a damp flannel and cleans her face, her hands. Her body is mottled with purpura, the lesions an ugly blackening violet, and the color of them makes him decide on the navy dress with flowers instead.

His fingers are slow and uncoordinated, and her limbs are slack and doll-like, and it takes longer than it ought to get her properly dressed.

Finally he’s done, and he gently arranges her hands across her belly. 

She looks so small in the big bed, he thinks, so frail and still. He hates the idea of her being cold, so he goes to the sitting room, finds her favorite tatty afghan, the garish crocheted wrap she favors when watching Eastenders or Jeremy Kyle or reading one of her endless horrible romance novels. He takes it into the bedroom, tucks it around her carefully, hoping it will keep her thin body warm in the gathering dark.

He brushes the hair tenderly away from her face, trying desperately to think of something to say to the woman who means the world to him. The woman he saved once, so very long ago, who repaid him a million times over in ways large and small every single day since.

But no words come. His mind is blank, emptied by shock, and there’s no one left to hear him say them anyway. He kisses her forehead, her skin cool and papery under his lips, and pulls the bedclothes up to cover her. 

He leaves her in her room and gently closes the door. 

There is nowhere else for her to go. They stopped collecting bodies four days ago.

***

Sherlock slips carefully into the flat, not wanting to wake John if he’s sleeping.

John’s not asleep. He’s sitting on the couch, haggard features lit by the soothing orange glow of the burning candle stumps stuck into various saucers and jar lids around the sitting room. Sherlock briefly thinks of the irony of surviving until the end of the world, only to go up in a blazing inferno due to his packrat tendencies. Honestly, it might be a better alternative. He opens his mouth to share his amusing (no it’s not) thought with John, but the words die on his lips when John looks up at him, eyes hollow. 

“They’ve stopped broadcasting,” he says quietly.

The hand-crank radio, unearthed from a closet in the basement where it had likely languished since the late eighties, has been their only link to the outside world. 

BBC Radio has less and less useful information every day; as structure broke down and chaos took hold, the news about what was happening grew sparser, the same bits of information repeating over and over. Martial law imposed in England. Rationing in effect. Avoid large crowds. Stay indoors. The rumors of a bioweapon, a manmade virus? Utterly false, baseless speculation. A vaccine is currently in development. Remain calm. Do not panic.

(Two days ago, the live broadcasts had been replaced by a creepy robotic voice reciting long strings of alphanumeric code. Sherlock had written them down for an entire hour, covering both sides of a notebook page. He has theories. He’s looking forward to discussing them with his brother when the lazy git finally calls.)

“Listen,” John says, and cranks the handle. The tinny recorded voice fills the room, this one not digitized but a man, utterly human and pushed to the brink of panic, barely holding it together under the thin veneer of stoic British reserve.

“The British Broadcasting Corporation has ceased operations. Thank you, goodnight, and God save the Queen.” A long, piercing beep, then several seconds of silence. “The British Broadcasting Corporation has ceased operations. Thank you, goodnight, and God save the Queen.” The shrill tone is painful to Sherlock’s ears.

Sherlock raises his hand. It’s trembling. “Turn it off,” he asks. “Please.”

John turns it off. “There’s nothing else on the dial,” he says. “No military, no VOA. Nothing.” 

Sherlock’s legs suddenly feel too rubbery to hold his weight, and he sags heavily against the wall as the realization hits him.

“No one’s coming,” he says, his voice breaking on the last syllable. 

“No,” John says, sounding hopelessly sad and lost. “Sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

***

Mycroft last called him nine days ago (a lifetime ago), the day the background news chatter reached critical mass, the panic in London suddenly a palpable thing. Don’t go out, he said. You can’t tell who’s contagious, just being outside is a danger, let alone trying to get out of London. Nine million people all trying to leave the city at once, they’re shooting people in the streets just to keep some vestige of order. I’ll come for you. Stay put, the three of you. I’ll come.

Mycroft didn’t come.

Sherlock called him. The line just beeped frantically then went dead. 

The days passed. The city was sealed off. Mrs Hudson went to bed with a headache and woke up feverish and delirious. London erupted in riots and flames, writhing in sickness and fear and death. Sherlock waited, knowing no mere British Army quarantine could keep his brother out.

Mycroft didn’t come.

Sherlock conserved his battery, turned on his phone only twice a day, desperately hoping for a voicemail or a text. He had no bars, but if anyone could somehow magically place a mobile call during the apocalypse, it would be his brother. 

Mycroft didn’t come.

And now the BBC itself has turned out the lights, gone gentle into that good night, and Sherlock has no choice but to face the truth he has carefully kept from himself for days now.

It is a fact as immutable as stone; as long as Mycroft Holmes lived to draw breath, he would come for his little brother.

The voice in his head, familiar as his own.

_What, then, can we deduce?_

Sherlock’s vision does a funny thing, going dark and fuzzy at the edges.

“No one’s coming,” he says again, the words tasting cold and metallic in his mouth. 

John’s strong arms catch him before he hits the ground.

***

Sherlock doesn’t black out, exactly; it's more like a greying out of several blurry, indistinct minutes, and when he finally reacquaints with reality he’s sitting in his chair, holding a cooling mug of tea John pressed into his hands moments earlier.

“You made a fire,” Sherlock says, confused.

“I’ve got a bit of a chill,” John says evenly.

As far gone as he is, he knows when John is lying. The why is unclear, until Sherlock thinks of the tang of woodsmoke obscuring the smells pushing in from outside despite the closed windows.

The city began to stink of corpses days ago. It’s growing unpleasant even to Sherlock, a man more inured to death than the entirety of New Scotland Yard combined. With the onset of high summer approaching, he can’t even begin to imagine how bad it will get.

“We should have left,” Sherlock says, voice cracked with grief and guilt. “You wanted to try to get to Paddington. We should have left.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered, I don’t suppose,” John says musingly, doing something fiddly with his iPhone. “It’s everywhere, I think. Not just London, not just England. Everywhere. And we’d have run the risk of being separated. No, it’s better that we stayed. Drink your tea, now.”

Not knowing what else to do, Sherlock drinks his tea--there’s sugar but no milk, they didn’t even have milk in when this madness began--and watches John fiddle with his phone. “You shouldn’t,” he begins; _waste the battery_ is what he is about to say before he realizes the utter inanity of that statement. It doesn’t matter. _No one is coming._ He takes another sip of tea, over-brewed on the Bunsen burner, bitter on his tongue.

John slots his mobile into the player on the sitting room table. A song begins to play, something warm and inviting, lush horns and velvet backbeat. John turns to Sherlock, and even though his face is creased with sorrow his eyes are bright and warm.

“Do you recognize this?” he asks.

Sherlock blinks, tries to cut through the fog shrouding his brain, and remembers. “Greg and Molly’s wedding,” he murmurs. 

“The first time we danced in public,” John smiles at the recollection. “We tussled a bit over who would get to lead.” He crosses the room, plucks the tea cup from Sherlock’s fingers, places it on the side table. “You wisely decided to get out of my way.”

Sherlock looks up into John’s dark blue eyes, almost black in the candlelight. He allows the sweet memory to flow over him, soothe the razor-sharp terror of their situation if only for a moment.

“I was afraid of getting run over,” Sherlock answers with the barest ghost of a smile.

“It’s a wise man who knows when to follow,” John tells him softly. He takes Sherlock’s hand. “Dance with me, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock nods, rises, permits John to take him gently by the waist, pulling their joined hands in to rest between their bodies as they move together. Their steps are nothing fancy or studied, just a simple slow dance to the sweet, crooning music coming from the speakers. 

The rusty gears of his fuzzed brain turn slowly, yield a single memory.

“Your mother,” Sherlock murmurs. “She liked this song.”

“She liked all kinds of soul music, R&B, Motown,” John says fondly, pulling Sherlock closer. “She’d play this as she cleaned the house, sing along. It was her favorite.” Their steps devolve into a slow shuffle in front of the fireplace as the deep honeyed baritone surrounds them, soothing their raw, knife-edged grief.
    
    
    let me be the one you come running to
     
    i’ll never be untrue 

This moment seems to stretch out forever, a golden drop of something wonderful suspended outside of the horror surrounding them, outside of time itself. John is in his arms, alive and real and warm, so very warm--

Too warm. 

Black fingers of pure dread clutch at Sherlock’s heart, squeeze it tight. He can’t breathe. He pulls back, looks at John's face, his eyes bright with fever, spots of color high on his cheeks.

He has failed to observe. He should have seen this _hours_ ago.

“John.” His voice is a tiny, broken gasp. He can’t get any air, he can’t breathe, he can’t think--”John. _No._ ”

“Oh, Sherlock,” John murmurs. “Love. Just--just dance with me. Please.” John presses his face to Sherlock’s chest in entreaty. 

Sherlock doesn’t know what else to do, how else to survive this moment, so he does what John asks, and dances.
    
    
    let's, let's stay together
    
    loving you whether, whether
    
    times are good or bad, happy or sad
    

***

In the brief, terrifying moments when he forced himself to look into this abyss, Sherlock prayed desperately to a non-existent deity that he be the one to fall ill first. He would hate to leave him, make him face this alone, but he knows that John is much stronger than him, and if one of them could possibly survive this he knows it would be John.

Sherlock knows that he can’t live without John. Won’t.

“Sherlock,” John says, low but urgent, as if reading his thoughts. “Sherlock, love, listen to me. Are you listening?”

Sherlock nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“The Browning is in the locked metal box in the back of the wardrobe in the upstairs room. The combination is 0910. It’s unloaded; the spare rounds are in my sock drawer, left hand side.”

Sherlock crinkles his nose in honest confusion. His mind is frozen with shock, all the gears permanently fused. “John,” he says hoarsely. “I know. I know all of this.”

“I’m giving you permission,” John says. “To touch my gun. If you need to.” John is speaking into Sherlock’s shirt, his voice muffled by expensive cotton. “I’ll try to be the one to take care of things, I promise I will, but I don’t know how long until--no one’s coming, love, and if I can’t--” John draws a deep, shuddering breath. 

“I want us to be together,” Sherlock whispers. 

“Me too,” John breathes against his chest. Sherlock is silent as they move gently to the music, his throat too tight for words. John is quiet as well, his shoulders steady, but his face is hidden against Sherlock’s chest and he can feel warm dampness is soaking into his shirt front.

John exhales, the hitching noise dangerously close to a sob. “I wanted,” he says, low and rough. “I wanted so many things.”

And now it’s Sherlock’s turn to be strong for John, if only for a moment. “I know,” he whispers, lips brushing the thin shell of his ear. “Me, too.”

He will shed rivers of tears, later, but right now Sherlock is too blank to cry, too frozen to do anything at all but hold John’s warm body close and press his lips into soft silver hair.

“Promise me, Sherlock,” John murmurs, almost too quiet to hear. “If I can’t, if I wait too long, then you have to. Promise me.”

He swallows past the sharp black fear lodged in his chest, fights for a lungful of air.

Sherlock wants to run, run from the flat, from London, coat flying behind him, John at his side, their feet pounding against the pavement as they escape this endless, hopeless nightmare. 

There’s nowhere to run. There’s nowhere to go. There are no more miracles.

“Okay,” he whispers at last. “As long as we’re together. Okay.”

The song ends. Another begins. The plaintive, sorrowful voice asks them how to mend a broken heart.

***

Sometime later, the battery runs out and the music ends.

The two men still sway together in the silence, clinging to each other as the candle stubs flicker out one by one and the fire burns down into ashes.

Outside the sitting room windows, their city rages and convulses and dies.


End file.
